Blooms and scents

It feels like spring in the foothills. The weather is soft these days, some sun and some clouds. The hills are SO green, and things are bursting into bloom. Wednesdays are often a "play day" for us, meaning we do something on foot or bicycle. Today we walked from home to Murphys (4.5 miles one way), had a great brunch at Grounds restaurant, and walked back home. A fine way to spend the morning!

And still have time for a bit of outdoor work in the afternoon. Penny is out on our seemingly endless hillside trimming back a year or so's worth of brush. When it's a bit more dry, she'll be out there with the weed eater, whacking back the winter's growth of grass and weeds.

My contribution was to remove three of our six lavender plants. I love lavender, and so do the bees, BUT.....in our early naivete on our land we planted them over the spetic system leach field. Supposedly they have very aggressive root systems. Sigh. And, we never really harvested the lavender and the bushes had gotten leggy and lazy. So I mangled three of them down as close to the ground as I could. When they are a bit dried out, we may be able to saw the trunks down to the ground. It actually feels good to open up that space, even though I will miss their lovely scent. (It does make working in them a pleasure!) And we are contemplating that this space could provide us with several more raised beds for summer gardening. The location does not work in the winter - no sun whatsoever.

I also took a few photos of our little fruit trees. The plum is especially lovely this year, and at this time. You can see it above and I'll add a close up, too. It smells fantastic!

The pink one is a miniature nectarine that we have had for several years. The ants usually get to eat most of the fruit, but we were able to freeze a couple of small bags of them this year; they are great on pancakes! The two new peach trees are just barely beginning to bloom, and the cherry has no sign of opening its tight little buds.

I can never figure out how, with these photo posts, to put the pictures where I want them in the text. They seem to have a life of their own.

And, the garden plan is still not done....but it was, and is, a great day.